Scanning the headlines of today's European press, optimism isn't a word that comes to mind. "Madness", "chaos", "fear", "collapse" feature heavily. Only a few days after the Brussels summit buoyed up the world's stock markets, the eurozone crisis has begun to resemble the giant planet in Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, skirting past the Earth in Wagnerian splendour, and now fatally moving back into view. Has Greek PM George Papandreou locked us into a eurozone dance of death? Last week's jubilant tone is today replaced by a bitter note. Leading the charge is French daily Le Figaro. With a leader titled "Will Europe someday be rid of the Greek poison?", the conservative daily, traditionally close to President Sarkozy's ruling UMP, hints at the mood over at the Elysée Palace:

"Perhaps," comes the answer, "but it will be without George Papandreou who, with incomprehensible flippancy, has decided to gamble the future of his country and the eurozone on a single hand of poker."

Characterising the referendum as "the latest Athenian prank", Le Figaro laments the "discredit of Greece, which is taking giant steps towards an exit from the euro – with Mr Papandreou's guilty collusion."

"In the worst way, in the worst context, with the worst possible consequences for us all, Papandreou raises the only real question. Totally taboo and even repressed until now. Impossible to formulate, so vertiginous is it, and terrifying for those who govern us. This simple question: What do people think of the brutal austerity cure that will befall them? Thank you Greece, at the avant garde of despair, for having put the question and to answer it first."

The Spanish and Italian press understandably reflect the gloom of those who feel they are next in line. For El País, this "Greek nonsense" may have "doomed the entire union to the abyss." Wrestling with its conscience, Turinese daily La Stampa asks: "But isn't it fair to give the word to the people when it comes to bearing such heavy sacrifices," before declaring: "In this case no. On the matter to be decided, Greece's national sovereignty no longer exists." Meanwhile, in Athens a furious To Ethnos calls the referendum "a blackmail of the Greek people that poses the dilemma: 'Either you vote yes for the European agreement or it's Greek bankruptcy; we will leave the euro if you vote no!'"

Perhaps cold comfort can be derived from the often less than Hellenophile Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "Democracy is junk", runs this ironic defence of Greece:

"The absolute incomprehension surrounding Papandreou's move reveals a lack of understanding about the democratic public in general. Is it not apparent that we're leaving the appraisal of the democratic processes to rating agencies, analysts and banking associations? Over the last 24 hours they have all been bombarded with interviews, as if they had anything to say about the Greeks' wish to vote on their own future."

At the fringes of the eurozone the Central European press, of a neoliberal, EU-phile bent, strikes a characteristically unsentimental note. "It's a question for the future – as long as the crisis lasts, the EU must be managed effectively, even undemocratically," writes a columnist in Poland's Rzeczpospolita. "Nobody asks for the captain for his license when the ship is sinking." The Czech press, of a similar tone, can be nevertheless be relied on for an impish take of events. According to Mladá Fronta DNES, the Greeks diddled statistics to enter the eurozone and now "have only one solution: falsify the referendum results according to Brussels' wishes".

Can the eurozone survive? One thing is certain, that its press is lurching towards an abyss of castastrophe metaphors. One can only hope that a few years from now, they will be less redolent of Lars Von Trier's dark opus than Private Frazer of Dad's Army muttering wild-eyed that "we're doomed".